Modern electronic designs (e.g., electronic systems, etc.) often include electronic devices or components that require a higher power due to for example, more transistors packed in a smaller die and hence generate more heat that may cause the performance of the electronics to degrade if such heat is not properly dealt with. Active or natural heat dissipation mechanisms have thus become more critical in modern electronic systems. For example, active cooling mechanisms (e.g., fans, liquid cooling mechanisms, etc.) may be installed within an enclosure to direct heat away from the electronic components through passive or natural cooling mechanisms (e.g., an arrangement of ducts to direct airflow through arrays of holes or openings along the sides of an enclosure of an electronic system).
Modern electronic designs often also include electronic devices or components that are more susceptible to interferences (e.g., electromagnetic interference or EMI) due to, for example, higher operating frequencies. The scaling of VLSI technology and the ever increasing number of transistors in an IC (integrated circuit) have further exacerbate the severity of interferences. Techniques such as electromagnetic shielding (EM shielding) have thus become an important criterion in the designs of modern electronic designs. EM shielding often involves surrounding electronics, wires, cables, etc. with conductive (or magnetic) materials to guard against incoming or outgoing electromagnetic frequencies (EMF).
Nonetheless, the requirements for managing thermal behaviors of an electronic design often conflict those for managing EMI. For example, more and/or larger openings in the enclosure of an electronic system may be preferred or even required for proper management of the thermal behaviors of the electronic system. On the other hand, more and/or larger openings in the enclosure an electronic system may cause adverse effects in properly containing EMI. To further exacerbate the challenges, two separate teams are usually allocated—one handling the EMI issues, and the other handing the thermal issues. These two separate teams often use two different sets of tools in two different physics domains (e.g., heat transfer versus electromagnetics) in accomplishing their respective tasks.
In addition, modern electronic designs are often limited to a certain footprint so that the designers cannot freely claim an unlimited space to complete the design. For example, mobile computing devices (e.g., cellular phones, laptop computers, etc.), automobile electronic control units (ECUs) have relatively fixed form factors required or driven either by market requirements or by the requirements of customers (e.g., automobile manufacturers limiting the space of an ECU). As the technology advances, these requirements may nevertheless remain. As a result, designers are often required to produce multiple generations of products, each more advanced than its predecessor, within such limited spaces.
Conventional approaches tackle these challenges either by trial-and-error or by having two separate teams that separately work on the thermal problems and the EMI problems with their respective, different sets of tools. For example, a thermal team may use various tools concerning heat transfer mechanisms to resolve problems in the thermal behaviors of an electronic design, while an EMI term may use tools concerning electromagnetic simulations to tackle the problems resulting from EMI. These two separate sets of tools often do not communicate or interact with each other. For example, a thermal team may generate some predicted thermal behavior of an electronic system by performing thermal analyses. Similarly, an EMI team may generate some predicted electromagnetic behavior of or even prediction of EMI for the same electronic system by performing EMI analyses. These analysis results at best inform the other team how the analyzed electronic design performs, yet these results provide no other useful information for the other team to complete its design tasks. As a result, the design process thus involves estimates, guesstimates, or even guesses and therefore requires many unnecessary rounds of iterations that waste a huge amount of computational resources, not to mention causing significant delays in completing the electronic design with sufficient viability, reliability, and performance.
Therefore, there exists a need for a method, system, and computer program product for implementing an electronic design with optimization maps to address at least the aforementioned problems, shortcomings, and challenges. It shall be noted that some of the approaches described in this Background section constitute approaches that may be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly stated, it shall not be assumed that any of such approaches described in this section quality as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.